OLN - HR Monitors

segamartinez

One of the better things going for OLN's coverage of the TdF is that some of the riders (Vasseur & Backstedt stand out in my mind) have HR monitors that are apparently being relayed to OLN where they can show the HR's of some of the riders on the course.

I was wondering if this info was available for some of the other (top) riders. I could see this as being a pretty big advantage for someone to be able to get their hands on that info. I'm imagining these upcoming mountain stages where you can get the HR of your competitor relayed to you and know that they're near their red zone. I also wonder if riders have the monitor displays where other riders could get a peek at them if they were sleuth enough (could also be cool if you could manipulate these displays to fire back at the competition).

Also, it's interesting to see that at the elite level there are major differences in max HR and relative intensity of the riders.

homeycheese

As Chris Carmichael mentioned (without being too caustic) the information is useless data without so many other factors (base HR, lactate threshold, etc...).

I see it as another attempt to fill air time with meaningless chatter and get some advertising dollars from Polar.

It's just like the "shameless" equipment profiles being done by Frankie, even to the point of plugging the Bontrager Buzz-Kill end-plugs which just "happen" to be on sale at Trek dealers during the tour...

OLN has become one big whored-out infomercial...knowing full well that the LA gravy train ends in 2 weeks...JMHO

Dead Star

bleh. The Giro did it first in may, and so therefore the tour copies them and gets all the credit because they're more well-known

peterlip

If you want to monitor some of the T-Mobile guys HR yourself, go to http://www.t-mobile-team.com/cms/tmoteam/en/ and hit the link to SRM: live biometric data. This will give you the HR, cadence, speed & power of three of the lesser lights in the t-Mobile team. Can't actually remember which ones, but it ISN'T Vino, Ullrich or Kloden.
However, having said that, it's not always available. For example, it didn't work the day of the team trials, and it does cut out from time to time.